Abstract
Alloying platinum (Pt) with suitable transition metals is effective way to enhance their catalytic performance for methanol oxidation reaction, and reduce their cost at mean time. Herein, we report our investigation on the synthesis of bimetallic platinum-cobalt (PtCo) alloy nanoparticles, their activation, as well as the catalytic evaluation for methanol oxidation reaction. The strategy starts with the synthesis of PtCo alloy nanoparticles in an organic medium, followed by loading on carbon substrates. We then remove the capping agent by refluxing the carbon-supported PtCo particles in acetic acid before electrochemical measurements. We emphasize the change in composition of the alloys during refluxing process, and the initial PtCo alloys with Pt/Co ratio of 1/2 turns into stable alloys with Pt/Co ratio of 3/1. The final Pt3Co particles have uniform distribution on carbon substrates, and exhibit activity with 2.4 and 1.5 times of that for commercial Pt/C and PtRu/C for methanol oxidation reaction.
Highlights
One of the major problems with direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), which are considered to be most promising as power sources for portable devices, is the slow oxidation kinetics of methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) at the anode[1,2,3,4,5]
We report our investigation on the synthesis of bimetallic PtCo alloy nanoparticles, their activation, as well as the catalytic performance for MOR
The high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) (HRTEM) images (Fig. 1b,d and f) illustrate the lattice planes in these nanocrystals, confirming that bimetallic PtCo, monometallic Co and Pt are of high crystallinity
Summary
One of the major problems with direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), which are considered to be most promising as power sources for portable devices, is the slow oxidation kinetics of methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) at the anode[1,2,3,4,5]. Before performing the electrochemical measurements, the electrocatalysts are usually activated by refluxing in acetic acid for period of time to remove the surface capping agents[49].
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